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Humble tinyBuild Bundle Review

Catching up on a couple of Humble Bundles this week, I will be taking a look at last week’s tinyBuild bundle. The lowest tier contains Divide by Sheep, Road to Ballhalla, No Time to Explain and SpeedRunners for the low price of $1USD.

Divide by Sheep

Divide by Sheep is a morbidly dark yet whimsical math puzzle solving game made by Bread Team. It is clearly a port of a mobile phone game but the graphics still look nice due to their bright and vibrant style. It contains over 100 little puzzles in a similar vein to games like Cut the Rope using a star system for additional goals in the level. It is your job to save animals from a flood by bouncing them between islands onto life rafts. There are a number of sometimes brutal obstacles in your way that you can use to your advantage to bring the number of sheep to the correct number or avoid. It is a fine little game but that is probably the best word I could use to describe it. It works well, and has a unique art-style. The first few levels are pretty boring but once you get some more obstacles going I can understand the appeal. Not for me though and know what you are getting here. Its a mobile game.

Road to Ballhalla

Road to Ballhalla is a puzzle ball-rolling (?) game developed by Torched Hill. I feel like I haven’t played a marble puzzle game in over a decade but I remember loving them as a kid. I’m glad to say that I had a lot of fun with Road to Ballhalla and I would recommend this game very strongly. It has a fantastic soundtrack and the levels are designed with this in mind with obstacles pulsing in time with the music. The aesthetic of the levels looks really good but there is a little something missing. A slight change to the background or perspective might improve this for a sequel but it looks great nonetheless. I also love the snarky text that guides you through the levels full of helpful/unhelpful hints and plenty of puns. Gameplay is basic but there is plenty of scope for replayability to make sure you collect all of the particles on each level. There is even a level editor to make your own levels but I’m unsure about the difficulty of syncing the levels with the music. I feel like that might be difficult. Overall I really like this game and would like to see it get some love. I also bought the soundtrack in support.

No Time to Explain Remastered

No Time to Explain was publisher and developer tinyBuild’s first project. It was originally conceived as a flash game on Newgrounds and was improved upon and released properly before being remastered recently. It is a strange platforming game that uses different weapons as the main modes of platforming. The basic character himself can only walk slowly and jump up very small ledges. His weapons such as jetpack lasers and shotguns propel him across the screen to get around. This is a difficult game and can take a while to get a hang of the controls. The plot is just strange but that is the point with none of it being explained or justified. This version also has multiplayer which is a nice touch. I can definitely see why this was a popular game but it definitely feels and looks like a flash game. I would say that this would appeal to those that like games like I Wanna Be the Guy. I’m not sure Super Meat Boy fans will actually approve of this game too much as the controls in that game as so tight and precise. In this game it is quite the opposite. It is a bit of fun but I’m not sure that I would pay that much money for it.

SpeedRunners

SpeedRunners is a multiplayer platformer developed by DoubleDutch Games. The easiest way to describe this game would be Mario Kart as a platformer. Your main objective is to win races by being the fastest and leaving your competitors offscreen. There are numerous item pickups that you can use to slow your opponents down and you can use a grappling hook in certain sections to speed up your progress. This is a game that really appeals to me. One of my favourite games is Rayman Origins where speedrunning is part of the core mechanics of the game. While the art style in SpeedRunners is obviously not of the same quality, it is clean and simple which fits the tone of the game. This game allows up to four people to competitively speedrun against each other and it is really fun in multiplayer. Single player content here is essentially redundant with only bot games. It might be worth practicing a couple of times with these before going online but that is pretty much its only use. If you are interested in picking this one up I would recommend convincing 3 other friends to do the same as it is really at its best while playing with people you know in voice chat. I highly recommend this game.

Verdict

I would say that this Humble Bundle is definitely worth an install. No Time to Explain isn’t really my cup of tea but I can understand it appealing to some people and Divide by Sheep is a nice simple game that may keep you amused for a little while. These two games were fine but I would suggest purchasing this bundle for SpeedRunners and Road to Ballhalla alone. I found these games to be top quality and I wouldn’t mind paying the full pricetags for these.